


i'm pulling on your heart to push my luck

by forcynics



Category: The Shannara Chronicles (TV)
Genre: 1x07 Breakline, F/F, First Kiss, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: It’s just that, somewhere along the way – somewhere since demons and fortresses and bathing pools and snowstorms and the way they’ve saved each other’s lives time and again – Eretria’s realized that she couldn’t bear seeing anything happen to the other girl.(aka, kissing in underground ruins)





	

 

 

 

Eretria’s never liked confined spaces. She’d give up the security of a stone fortress for an empty field under the stars anytime. If something comes after you out in the open, at least you can run and run and run. Walls don’t feel safe, they feel suffocating. _Trapped_.

Being trapped underground is even worse. She feels jittery, itching all down her skin, like she doesn’t fit right down here. There’s not enough air, not enough space, nowhere to run, no way out. She keeps looking back to the hole where they crashed through the ground, keeps focusing on the sunlight drifting through.

Amberle doesn’t seem to share any of her unease down here. She’s wandering around the room, studying every nook and cranny, every relic she finds. She touches everything so carefully, just the tips of her fingers brushing through the dust on the cover of an old book, turning the pages lightly, as if she couldn’t bear to be the ruin of anything that’s lasted so long. 

It’s clear she’s fascinated by the secret little world they’ve tumbled into, preserved out of sight for who could guess how long – thousands of years, surely.

Eretria leans back against the wall and watches Amberle wander from one rotting artefact to the next. She can’t imagine _thousands of years._

Amberle looks as if she’s been struck with awe, but that’s not the word Eretria would use for the sharp unease she can’t dislodge from her stomach. She feels like she shouldn’t be here. That’s not an entirely new feeling.

But Amberle looks like she shouldn’t be anywhere else, gentle and interested and so full of care for people who died thousands of years ago. 

_This is why she’s going to be their saviour._

The thought strikes sudden and blinding, but Eretria believes it, truly and honestly. She believes in Amberle, this girl she took for a foolish elf who didn’t know what she was doing in the woods, bound to get her ears cut off or worse.

She believes in her much better now. 

They all have a purpose in this strange quest, after all. Amberle will save the world, and Wil has his elfstones to fight the demons, and – what of Eretria? What of her purpose?

She will keep Amberle safe, and that will be her own part of saving the world. She doesn’t have magic stones, but she’s quick and sharp and she wants to keep Amberle safe with a yearning that’s grown so powerfully inside her that she doesn’t know what to do with it except turn her mind the other way.

It’s just that, somewhere along the way – somewhere since demons and fortresses and bathing pools and snowstorms and the way they’ve saved each other’s lives time and again – Eretria’s realized that she couldn’t bear seeing anything happen to the other girl. 

It’s terrifying, and it makes her sick to her stomach, because it was never supposed to be this way. She’s a one-woman show, in it for herself and damn everyone else, especially now that she’s finally out of Cephelo’s grip.

But swearing her own sort of vow to Amberle and their quest doesn’t feel anything like her indenture to Cephelo. It feels like her own choice.

What a wonderful, powerful, magical thing. _Choice_.

Amberle calls her name.

“Come see this!” she calls out, her hand hovering over an old book like she can’t even bring herself to touch the page in case it would crumble under her fingertips.

Eretria takes one last glimpse up at the sunlight, steels her stomach, and goes to her.

 

 

 

She checks Amberle’s arm later that night, sitting at the bottom of rusted metal stands that reach almost to the ceiling of the cavern. Eretria wouldn’t trust the stairs all the way at the top, not after so many years and years, but she imagines them filled with crowds of people, spectators at some grand event. It’s hard to imagine people alive down here, living here, so long ago.

The bandage on Amberle’s arm is bloodied all the way through, but her wound isn’t bleeding anymore, and there’s no redness or swelling around it that would hint at infection. 

Eretria feels a sharp pang of relief in her chest. She focuses on keeping her hands steady as she wraps a new bandage around Amberle's arm.

“Thank you,” Amberle says quietly. 

Eretria doesn’t look up, just keeps wrapping the bandage, but she shrugs. 

“Don’t need you to slow me down, do I?”

The words come automatically, like the best kind of defence, the most impenetrable. But then she glances up, against her best instincts, against everything warning her _careful, careful, careful._

Her eyes meet Amberle’s only long enough to see the glint of amusement, like Amberle doesn’t believe the casual dismissal, before she quickly looks back down and pulls a tight knot in the bandage.

Amberle’s other hand sneaks out and grabs her hand before she can pull entirely away.

“I don’t know why you were in my visions,” she says softly. Her voice is just above a whisper but it sounds impossibly loud in this abandoned room, so large and so empty except for the two of them. “I don’t know why the Ellcrys saw you at Safehold, and believe me, I fought it, I was sure it must be wrong, but—” She swallows. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry we took you in chains.”

Eretria’s been chained before, forced into awful situations on other people’s whims, sold and traded and used – she’s been treated like her own choices never mattered, but – 

No one’s ever apologized for it.

Amberle squeezes her hand gently, and Eretria’s heart flips over in her chest.

There’s a new kind of burning in her stomach. She wouldn’t compare it to anything as foolish as butterflies – it’s like acid melting through her, so painful, like she _needs_ this or else she’s going to tear herself inside out from all this thinking and wanting, god, _wanting_.

“Well,” she finally says, when the silence has stretched out as long as it can. “Here we are.” Amberle’s hand is still on hers, and Eretria’s fingers twitch, almost involuntarily, but with just a bit of purpose, a bit of intent she couldn’t hold back. Her fingers slide against Amberle’s, just slightly, barely noticeable except for how it would now be so easy to twine them together.

Her heart’s still doing flips, over and over, and it feels like it might have even made it up into her throat. There has to be something there blocking all the other words from coming out.

“I didn’t think you’d last three days,” she finally blurts. She locks eyes with Amberle, blushes a little, feels her lips twitching in the beginning of a smirk. “I thought this whole quest was doomed from the start.”

Amberle’s brow is drawn together, the tiniest wrinkle between her eyes. She bites her lower lip, then releases it. Her hand is still on top of Eretria’s.

“I suppose I’ve needed a bit of rescuing,” she says, and before Eretria can tell her that’s not what she meant, and besides, they’ve _all_ rescued each other, countless times over already, Amberle curls her fingers with Eretria’s and squeezes tight, inching closer.

There’s a sudden determination in her face that’s bewildering and thrilling all at once. Eretria’s mouth goes dry. Her heart seizes up with shock and falls to the bottom of her stomach.

“But what about now?” Amberle asks in a rush, like she’s just realized that Eretria spoke in the past tense. She swallows, and for the briefest second, there’s a flash of uncertainty in her face, the smallest display of nerves. “What do you think of the quest now?”

She looks like she so desperately wants to hear some kind of reassurance, and Eretria thinks _I believe in you_ , but there’s something else in Amberle’s face too, something else in the way her entire body is leaned closer and her fingers are clutching Eretria’s and her lips are parted like she has a thousand other things she wants to say but she’s terrified to disturb this moment.

And somehow just that thought, just the idea that Amberle could be terrified too, settles all of the nerves and the butterflies and the acid in Eretria’s stomach. Her heart resumes a steady rhythm and she reaches up one miraculously unshaking hand and brushes a tangled lock of hair behind Amberle’s ear. 

“I think you’re going to save the world,” she says.

—and there’s a second where the words just hang there, where it feels like a horrendous mistake, an admission she never meant to give, all her vulnerabilities splayed out in front of her, and her heart is pounding, pounding, pounding, and she wants to reel the words back, wants to disguise them better under a layer of sarcasm, but then Amberle is breathing in sharply and it takes all the bravery Eretria can summon to meet her eyes, and then—

And then Amberle is kissing her.

She’s leaning across all the space between them so easily, as if nothing ever separated them at all, and her mouth is soft, but not tentative, like this is something she’s been thinking about too, like she knows exactly what she wants. 

And it should terrify Eretria even more, but her hand’s still tangled in Amberle’s hair and it’s so easy to pull her in, so easy to scooch closer until their thighs are pressed together, and kiss her back. As soon as she does, as soon as the intent becomes clear, Amberle deepens the kiss, a harder press of lips and her fingers squeezing Eretria’s more tightly, then sliding up her arm and curling around the back of her neck.

Eretria bites at Amberle’s lower lip, just a little, just gently, just enough to elicit a short gasp from the other girl, and then they’re kissing open-mouthed and she wants so much she must be shaking from it.

When Amberle finally breaks away to gasp for breath, she doesn’t pull back, tips her forehead against Eretria’s instead like she can’t bear to separate more than necessary. Her hand is still warm on Eretria’s neck, and Eretria’s hand is still tangled in her hair, and for a moment they both just – breathe.

Amberle’s nose brushes Eretria’s cheek, something in the gesture so fond it makes Eretria feel like her heart’s been squeezed in a vice. Amberle kisses her again, soft and brief, then draws back just enough so their eyes can meet. She pulls her hand away and twines her fingers with Eretria’s once more, squeezes tightly.

“I think we’re going to save the world together,” she finally says.

And Eretria believes her.

 

 

 


End file.
